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Close Grip BB Bench to BB Bench Press Ratio

Just wondering what everyone's Close Grip BB Bench Press to BB Bench Press ratio is? i.e. How much do you bench press and how much do you close grip bench press? I'm trying to get a feel for where my tricep pressing strength should be in relation to my chest pressing.

I understand that and realize that there are several variables (deltoid, grip, pec., tricep, etc strength) invloved in pressing movements, but I'm interested in seeing, essentially, if it is indeed my triceps that are killing my bench press or if it's my chest or deltoid strength so that I can focus more attention on the lagging link.

Say for instance I weigh 155lbs @ 5'6" tall, and I BB bench press 185lbs for 8 reps, but I only press 165lbs for 6 reps on close grip bench. Should my close grip bench press weight be closer to my regular bench press as an indicator of my tricep strength or does that sound about right? If I can get a few other values or comparisons then I'll be able to determine if my tricep strength is on par with what I should be able to bench press and if it isn't then I can ascertain whether I need to focus more on my delts or triceps, or pecs for that matter.

I don't close bench press so I can't answer your question. My workout partners are hard-headed.

But it brings me to this question. How wide is your regular bench pressing grip? My hands are about an inch from the "rings" on the bar. I have a solid bench 235lbs for 10 reps but I catch alot of heat for having a wide grip. Just wondering where other guys my size grip the bar.

I'm 5'7 165lb

My teacher said true beauty is on the inside? That's just something ugly people say.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"Romans 7:14-25

"Judo is not about strength. Yet in the learning curve, all Judokas get strong. Only with time do you learn where to apply that strength."The Art of Judo

It's tough for me to remember this right now without being under the bar...I guess I don't pay much attention to it, and some of the bars at my gym don't have well defined rings. But if my memory serves me correctly, I believe I lign up my ring fingers with the rings on the bar. I'm going to the gym tonight for a spinning class so I'll take a look at the bar while I'm there and post a more definitive answer when I get back.

cynic,
Your hands are an inch outside the rings? That does seem a bit wide. The optimal grip depends on what your goals are when benching. If you just want to lift big, use your strongest aspects. For example, if you have strong delts than use a wide grip. If you have strong triceps use a narrower grip. Personally I bench for size and strength so I adjust my grip so that at the bottom of the lift my forearms are just about perpendicular with the ground/bench. So its kind of the best of both worlds...

Believe it or not, I meet lots of athletes who are in the same situation. The first thing that I do is look for the aforementioned disproportionate ratios between different exercises. For instance, if a particular athlete's personal best on the close-grip bench press is 225, but he has to ask the bag boy at the local Piggly-Wiggly to heft the one-gallon jugs of milk into his trunk, something is terribly, terribly wrong. In other words, more than often enough, if you're failing to make progress in a given lift, the body is protecting itself from injury by neurally inhibiting strength gains.

By working with hundreds and hundreds of elite athletes over the course of two decades, I've been able to collect some normative data about how much an athlete should be able to lift, relative to his other lifts. The athletes who achieved those ratios tended to perform better on the international scene and had the lowest incidence of injuries.

For the purpose of this article, I'm only going to discuss the upper extremities. I use the 14-inch grip bench-press test as the reference value for other upper extremity exercises. Even though I acknowledge that this area needs further study, this was the first time that the strength and conditioning coaching community was presented with simple tests to assess the athlete's optimal strength ratios. This data is presented below in Table 1. You don't need to spend too much time looking at it right now, because I'll be coming back to it.

I suggest that you figure out your 1RM in all of the described movements and make training adjustments accordingly. For instance, if you test your close-grip bench press 1RM and it's 225 pounds, you know that you should be able to do eight reps of single-arm external rotations with 20 pounds (225 x 0.09 = 20.25 pounds). Similarly, you should be able to do 187 pounds on the incline barbell press (225 x 0.83 = 186.75 pounds), 182 pounds on supinated chin-ups, 144 pounds on behind-the-neck presses, 104 pounds on Scott barbell curls, and 68 pounds on standing reverse curls.

If you fail to come close or meet any of those parameters, you need to focus on that particular body part. Again, this topic needs more research, but I've found these guidelines to be invaluable in determining an athlete's strengths and weaknesses.

Here are some general notes on the tests that I use:

• All lifts are done on a 40X0 tempo (that's four seconds to lower the bar, no rest, and an explosive concentric rep).

• Lifts are to be tested after six to eight sets of low-rep (one to three) warm-ups.

• Form, of course, has to be perfect on all lifts.

• Except for the reverse curls, in which I use an Ivanko bar, I use competition Eleiko plates and bars. The Eleiko weights allow me to adjust the weight to the nearest 0.5 kg.

• Not all lifts are tested on the same day. Instead, I prefer to use different ones at various sections of the training process.

• It is extremely important that maximal range is achieved in the eccentric range.

*The 0.96 is derived by taking 100 and subtracting 4%. Similarly, if he had only done five reps with 20 pounds, he'd have missed his rep target by three. I would then multiply three reps by 2% to get 6%. If I subtract 0.06 from 1.00, I get 0.94. Therefore, 20 pounds x 0.94 = 18.8 pounds.

Now, I realize that it would be swell to include strengthening routines for any body part in which you may lack strength, but that would make this article as long as "War and Peace." Instead, I suggest that you use the Testosterone search engine to dig up any or all of the articles that we've posted in the last year on training various body parts.

You may consider all of this testing to be too much trouble. Fine. At the very least, test your close-grip bench press and your single-arm external rotation. If you're like the majority of athletes, you'll find that your rotator cuffs are woefully underdeveloped, and simply including this movement into your routines will dramatically increase your bench press performance.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"Romans 7:14-25

"Judo is not about strength. Yet in the learning curve, all Judokas get strong. Only with time do you learn where to apply that strength."The Art of Judo

Thanks Maki. That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I’m an athlete first and foremost, and then a bodybuilder, so I always have concerns about disproportionate strength and development in the back of my mind. I have the feeling that what is really inhibiting my progress on my bench press is the atrophy my infraspinatus and terres major sustained while I was in the hospital last year. I haven't made a conscientious effort to rehab those muscles or my damaged brachial plexus. I just wanted to be sure that it wasn't my delts or triceps that were holding me back.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!"Romans 7:14-25

"Judo is not about strength. Yet in the learning curve, all Judokas get strong. Only with time do you learn where to apply that strength."The Art of Judo

My close grip is a lot weaker than my normal grip. My normal grip I use 280 lbs for 3 sets of 5-8, my close grip I use 200 for 2 sets of 5-8. But it's getting stronger though. Just about a month ago I was only using like 165 or 170 lbs for close grip.